


Season's Skypings

by Janice_Lester



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janice_Lester/pseuds/Janice_Lester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach Skypes Karl as Christmas draws near.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Season's Skypings

**Author's Note:**

> Zach and Karl are in open relationships. Beta'd by [](http://vee-dub.livejournal.com/profile)[vee_dub](http://vee-dub.livejournal.com/). I don't know these people and I made all this up.

Zach stares, dumbstruck, at his computer screen. Skype-Karl is wearing the most _hideous_ Hawaiian shirt in the history of _ever_. Seriously, Zach’s pretty sure you'd have to get your shirts custom made to achieve quite that level of garish grotesquerie. On the plus side, the man has once again failed at the kindergarten-level task of doing up buttons. On the downside, there are matching shorts.

“Shut up,” Karl growls, waving a cocktail stick violently. “It’s summer.” His gesture loses some of its threat when he follows this up by slurping noisily on his brightly-coloured cocktail.

“You know, people who drink alcohol through a straw—”

“Get drunker? That’s a myth.”

“Yes, but they do tend to get the same amount of drunk rather faster.”

“Point. So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call? I was quite happy out by the pool, you know. We could have just chatted on the phone.”

“Oh, Karl, have you no respect for my telephone bills?”

Karl rolls his eyes.

“I wanted to see you. Wish you a Merry Christmas face to face. Well, representation of face to representation of face. Besides, I did you a favour. Looks like you’ve been getting a bit too much sun.”

Karl’s pink-glowy face splits wide around a yawn. “Mmm. Gotta make the most of my time off. I have to be in—hang on—Copenhagen next week? I get to play some kind of American police chief on the run from Interpol for a series of grisly murders he didn’t commit.” His lips capture the straw again, and he takes a sip. Swallows. Leans back in his chair, which swivels forty or so degrees clockwise before swivelling back again. “Should be fun.”

“Huh,” Zach says, mainly to himself. “Copenhagen’s in Zealand, isn’t it?”

“Denmark,” Karl corrects, and then frowns. Clearly he’s just realised he’s more drunk than he thought. “Zealand’s in Denmark, eh? Probably some place Abel Tasman liked. Why don’t I know anything about Tasman? Could tell you shiploads about Captain Cook.”

“Please don’t,” Zach says delicately.

Karl snorts, raises his drink. “Right you are. So, Christmas tidings, yadda. You got a good spread planned? Or your mum has?”

Zach frowns, thinks of Jon, and their two families in different parts of Pennsylvania both expecting to see them on the day. “It’s complicated.”

“Ah. Well, a little bird tells me we’re having a nice lamb roast with all the trimmings, spuds and carrots and pumpkin and kumara, and Nat makes this gravy that’ll make you _weep_ , man. You’d have to get your arse on a plane PDQ, though.” He covers a burp with his palm. “Bring us some duty free booze, eh? Actually, scratch that, you know what it’s like when the two of us drink together.”

Zach’s eyebrows lift. “I do. I didn’t realise it was a problem, though I confess I might have been misled by your repeated assurances that it was not, in fact, a problem.”

“Isn’t,” Karl says. “Not like that. I mean, Nat’s attitude and your boy’s attitude are pretty much the same, as long as they know about it, no big deal. No, it’s just… We get pissed together, I’m likely to awake from a weekend’s dreamlike haze of sexual exhaustion to find I’ve missed fifteen messages from my agent who has agreed in my absence that I’d be happy to take on the role of a tap-dancing pirate in a new 3D musical about ship-board rodent infestations.”

“You know,” Zach muses, “I think your vocabulary actually improves when you’re drunk.”

“Aww, you say the sweetest things.” Noticing that his glass is now empty, Karl glares at it for several seconds before putting it down somewhere out of the webcam’s sight.

“Don’t you wish there was snow?”

Karl blinks at the question. Zach’s rather surprised to have heard it himself.

“Christmas has always been in summer for me.” He shrugs. “There’s nothing to miss. I dunno, do you feel like it’s not _really_ Christmas when you’re in LA for it? It’s not like LA’s heavy on the seasons.”

“I sent you a present,” Zach blurts, into the silence that follows this palpable hit.

Karl grins. “Yeah. It’s under the tree as we speak. Feels like socks.”

Zach is unsure whether or not to feel wounded at the suggestion he would resort to cliché.. Then again, perhaps it’s _such_ a cliché that it can now be indulged in ironically? “It’s not socks.”

“Ah, the plot thickens.” He waggles his adorable eyebrows. “I know, it’s a skinny tie, isn’t it? Or striped boxer-briefs?” He pauses. “Hand-knitted penis-warmer? I can see you learning to knit just for that.”

That sounds like a lot of work, but the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it might be worth it.

“Are you blushing, Mister Quinto?”

“Shut up. I just wanted to confirm that my gift had survived the ordeal of the busy worldwide postal system this time of year and actually managed to reach you. I am now sufficiently reassured of this fact, thank you.”

Karl sighs suddenly, with the instant melancholy of drink. “I wish you were here, in the flesh.”

Or maybe not drink, because now Zach’s feeling the same way and _he_ ’s had only water and coffee all day, probably all week. “Me too.” He command-tabs quickly away from his Skype window to check his calendar, the first prickles of hopeful excitement dancing low in his stomach. “How about New Year’s?” he asks quietly, bringing Karl’s face back again. “I’m free until the twelfth.”

It’s like a sunset, only faster, watching Karl’s face go from wistful to blank, then to a tentative smile, then a small but definite smile, then a genuine full-blooded smile, then a grin. “Better present than the penis-warmer,” he rules, before giving a nervous-sounding chuckle and ruffling up the hair on the back of his head. “You mean it, right?”

“I mean it. Though please don’t wear that shirt when you pick me up at the airport.”

“It’s a deal.”

Zach relaxes. He’ll have to call his agent and his travel agent, and do some damage to his credit card balance paying for a short-notice international airfare, but he’s now quite confident that it’s going to be a merry Christmas indeed, and a very happy New Year.

 

***END***

  



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